Stephen Colbert said to his son about hell: “Hell is separation from God’s love.” God’s love is perceived differently depending on how one perceives judgment and salvation. If Christ was crucified to satisfy God’s wrath against sinful humans, one receives a picture of God with a radically different personality than the God described by universalists Brad Jersak and Sharon Baker.
I concede that God cannot be a mere fuzzy, cuddly good feeling that comes and goes and that such a sentimental myth spawns correctives like Ulrich Lehner’s God Is Not Nice: Rejecting Pop Culture Theology and Discovering the God Worth Living For.
To be a Christian is more than a loving feeling. There is a cost. What cost am I willing to pay? How much am I willing to give? How can I be less selfish?
To illustrate this point, here’s an earlier post:
Flannery O'Conner Was Weary of Religion That Was a Big, Cozy Electric Blanket
Because I struggle with the doctrine of eternal hell and my own selfishness (and other reasons), I can't call myself a Christian and be honest, but I look at Christ-like experiences that many of us have. These experiences humble us and compel us to see love as the highest way of being. Some of us on the basis of these experiences become Christians or some other faith. Some of us embrace no specific religion but say we have found a "personal God."
One advantage of Christianity, or I should say, a compelling point for Christianity, is that we're commanded to leave our comfort and lose our life for Christ. In other words, these deep experiences aren't just fleeting reminders of God. They point to a faith that the person can build on. It's hard to build on a "personal God." It's just a fleeting experience that wraps one in comfort, but with no cost.
Flannery O'Connor, a Catholic, wrote about the real cost of her faith:
“I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child's faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way, though some never do.
What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you fell you can't believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God. ”
My “electric blanket” could be surrounding myself with routine, shaving, watches, working out, etc.
At the same time, I am cognizant of Alfred North Whitehead’s warning in Religion in the Making that god can be evil and “leave in his wake the loss of a greater reality.” But selfishness can lead to loss of greater reality also.
I’m also cognizant of Rufus Jones from Fundamental Ends of Life that God can be a “loving Friend.” As Jones writes:
But there is nevertheless in our world a nucleus of real intrinsic religion—religion in spirit and in truth—which seeks God, as the artist seeks beauty, as the lover seeks the beloved, as the saint seeks holiness, for no ulterior and extrinsic purpose, solely to find Him and to worship Him and to love Him and to be like Him. Religion, when it comes to its full glory and “merges” from the complex forms that have gone under the name of “religion” is a fundamental end of life. It attaches to an ultimate reality. It seeks, finds and enjoys a great Companion, a loving Friend, a tender Father. It has its ground and basis in the essential nature of the soul of man . . .
Can I be a Christian like Rufus Jones and find a way not to be separated from this “ultimate reality,” this “great Companion” without being in a cozy electric blanket? To be separated from this ultimate reality is to be in hell.